Last week when we looked at medieval society we saw that the basic “flow” of their civilization ran towards security and stability over opportunity and change. This week we looked at the historical context of this choice, and what other areas of belief may have influenced those choices.

Many of us may believe that we have freedom to make of our lives what we will, that we paint upon a blank canvas. In reality, where we live, when we live, and what happens around us influence us a great deal, sometimes subconsciously. So too, we must evaluate the choices made by the medievals in light of the context from which they emerged.

In the centuries after the fall of Rome, change and uncertainty formed the dominant theme, as the map below indicates.

No one can live like this for long. Wen respite came after the conversion of many of these tribes, it made sense that one would want to create a society where one knew their place for themselves and their children. We see this love of “knowing one’s place” in their cosmology. A few different ideas dominated their view of the cosmos.

Heirarchy

In space up and and down is all relative, but we need to find an orientation to make sense of our surroundings. When we look at the sky moderns today would say we look “across” the universe (like the famous Beatles song) at other stars, planets, etc. All of the pictures I remember of the Solar System had the planets in a horizontal line, like this one:

For the medievals one looked “up” at the stars from a fixed position on Earth. Everything you saw stood higher than you, and naturally height conveyed superiority. The Earth occupied a pride of place, in the sense that other planets revolved around it, but what many overlook is that it also occupied the bottom rung of the ladder, a combination of dignity and humility.

Spheres of Influence

Each planet, or section of the universe, had its own sphere of influence, it’s own “part to play.” If you play second chair oboe, you keep your eyes off the music of first chair trumpet. Here is a rough outline of how they saw things:

This concept of “spheres of influence” may have seeped into medieval feudalism, where each noble had their own territory, or “sphere” where they had a large amount of power and discretion. Thus feudal Europe knew little of the problem of political centralization (though they had other problems). I should note that the above picture shows Earth much larger than they believed it to be in reality. Everyone followed Ptolemy’s Almagest which stated that,

The Earth, in relation to the distance of the fixed stars, has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point.

As my colleague Mr. Rogers pointed out, they represented the Earth thematically in relation to the rest of the cosmos, for here is where the drama of salvation takes place.

Harmony

It is precisely this division and separation that created the overall harmony. Space for medievals brimmed with energy and life, in contrast to the modern view of a great cold void. Sound comes from motion, and it seems that they literally believed in the “music of the spheres,” a grand cosmic symphony created by planetary motion.

Everyone knew their place in the cosmos, and knew that place to have significance.

One can exaggerate the importance of these ideas on everyday life. The path of Saturn would not change the fact that you have pick up your kids at soccer practice. But deep down, surely our view of a vast, linear, and empty universe impacts us. Some of us might echo the French philosopher/mathematician Pascal, who wrote that, “the eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.”

As a brief aside, we note that for the medievals, education involved not just the “trivium” — the grammar, logic, and rhetoric of a subject — but also the “quadrivium,” consisting of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. To see music grouped with these three will strike us as odd. But for the medievals the only way to understand math was to understand music, and so too, astronomy could not be properly understood without knowing music. Music then, served not just to entertain but to teach us about the reality of the universe itself.

Whether they consciously linked their cosmology and their daily life or not, we can see a direct connection between their view of society, though can’t tell if the chicken preceded the egg. Like all societies they had their own system, their own strengths and weaknesses. Whatever its faults, in feudal Europe you knew your duties and what was expected of you, as this text from ca. AD 1200 shows. . .

I, Thiebault, count palatine of Troyes, make known to those present and to come that I have given in fee to Jocelyn of Avalon and his heirs the manor Gillencourt, which is of the castle La Ferte sur Aube; and whatever this same Jocelyn shall be able to acquire in the same manor I have granted to him and his heirs in augmentation of that fief I have granted, moreover, to him that no free manor of mine will I retain men who are of this gift. The same Jocelyn, moreover, on account of this, has become my liege man, saving however, his allegiance to Gerard d’ Arcy, and to the lord duke of Burgundy, and to Peterm count of Auxerre. Done at Chouadude, by my own witness, in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord 1200 in the month of January.

Yes, it could be complicated (but less so that the software contracts we “agree” to). Basically the king ruled at the behest of the nobility, but the nobles owed the king military service. Peasants farmed the land of the lord, but the lord owed them protection and patronage, and so on. The whole of society was a dance of mutual obligation. But just as the Earth could not switch places with Jupiter, so too your station is your station, whatever betide (for the most part).

Next week we will look at those outside the basic feudal structure, the craftsmen and merchants. Until then,

We all know that peace treaties have a shaky track record. When wars end we hope that the suffering might mean something, that it might translate into a political order that helps ensure that history does not repeat itself. And yet, often these treaties fail. We might think of the numerous wars between France and England, for example. Various forms of “Punic Peaces” work, whether they take the form of utter destruction or sending Napoleon to St. Helena. Most agree, however, that when we think of “peace” we often have something loftier in mind.

Some treaties do work. The Civil War will not restart anytime soon. Japan and the U.S. have been friends since 1945, and the same is true of our relationship to West Germany/Germany. But many don’t work, and fewer treaties failed more spectacularly than the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.

Historians offer many theories to explain why treaties fail in general. The typical mistakes usually fall into a few categories or patterns:

1. Failure to View the War as an Organic Whole

Though it may seem artificial, I think that major events should be viewed through a narrative lens. World War I had its own prologue, beginning, middle, and end. Wars tend to take on a life of their own once they get started. As the “story” changes shape one can easily forget how it all started. But this is a mistake. A peace treaty should serve as the end of a story that had a certain beginning and middle. If the end has nothing to do with the beginning, people will hate the ending and demand a rewrite, or at least a sequel.

I think this is one key reason why many treaties end up being no more than pauses in the action. Combatants want an intermission, but don’t want the end to come just yet. For them, there remains more to the story.

I think the victors in W.W. I would be strongly tempted to forget this principle. Any analysis of the causes of the war would have to blame a variety of factors and nations. Certainly one could blame Germany mainly for the causes of the war, but other nations had their part to play as well. Yet the combatants fought the war so grimly, and the death toll rose so unimaginably, that the victors would almost certainly think only of the fighting (the middle) and forget the beginning of the story. The ending, then, would not fit within the story as a whole.

2. Failure to Look Ahead

Perhaps one can take my “story” analogy too far, because if we try and keep a war purely contained as its own entity, we miss the inevitable ripple effects that have spilled out into society because of the conflict. Thus, a peace treaty has to deal with the war behind and look ahead to the world it made. This need to “look ahead,” however, does not come easily. We rarely see the nose on our own face, and lacking omnipotence, are left somewhat in the dark.

Treaties usually handle the “physical” aspects of ending wars such as reassigning territory, reparations, etc. but rarely consider the psychological aspects. The horrors of the conflict imprint themselves on our minds, and the victors often want to “close the book” on that period as soon as possible. We want to move on, relax, be happy. The victors feel this way, at least. But often the losers don’t want to move on. They often want to dwell on the pain and humiliation they feel. They want to be heard, and will not want to “move on.” Exhaustion on the side of the victors, more than apathy or ignorance, can be society’s greatest foe at this stage.

I think a good example of this is The Congress of Vienna, which decided that shape of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars of 1797-1815. Millions died as the French Revolution convulsed the world and every monarch knew their days might be numbered. My interpretation is that the assembled powers, smarting under years of war, tried to put Pandora, i.e. the French Revolution, back in the box. They suppressed popular movements, conceptions of “rights” — anything that smacked of the Revolution, and threw the baby out with the bath water. Some might argue that the Congress of Vienna worked to keep the peace throughout the 19th century, but to my mind the Revolutions of 1848, The Crimean War, the wars of Italian and German Unification, the conflict between Turkey and Russia, and the eventual explosion that was World War I say otherwise. Pressure cookers explode sooner or later.

3. Avoid Too Many Mixed Messages

Try as we might, mixed messages can’t be avoided. As parents we give lip service to the ideal that we treat our children equally, but then reality sets in. The age, gender, and personality of our children all play a role in how we parent. We modify our expectations and begin to tailor certain things to certain children. Children pounce on these discrepancies immediately and bemoan their fate, but if parents keep their different expectations reasonable and at least mostly clear, we can keep the ship afloat.

Every peace treaty should have justice in view, but practical reality will always intervene. Even the justly victorious must account for the fallenness of the world and the messiness of reality. The vanquished will seize upon these crossed signals of justice and cry foul, but if the signal mixing is not too serious, they deal with it.

Problems come when the victors take a sanctimonious stance. The infamous “War Guilt” clauses of the Versailles Treaty did just this. Germany had to assume full blame for everything, despite the fact that no country had their hands clean during the conflict. The infamous Article 231 reads,

The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

Versailles also tried to reorder Europe along the idea of “national self determination,” and the elimination of empires. Such was President Wilson’s grand vision for peace. So, the war’s aftermath saw the creation of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, etc. Except for Germany — Germans don’t get to be “self-determined.” Some Germans went to Czechoslovakia, others to Poland, others faced occupation by the French. We can compare the following two maps, the first showing the political divisions, the next, the ethno-linguistic ones, and the differences reveal themselves.

Overseas England and France kept their empires, however, but not Germany. Neither did the U.S. give up its interests in the Philippines. The gaps between “What we say,” and “What we do” grew very large at Versailles for the allies, and Germany noticed.

4. Don’t Kick them when They’re Down

This applies to Germany, but also Russia. The Communist Revolution threw Russia into a tumult and made them persona non grata at Versailles. They too lost big chunks of territory to Poland. Both Germany and the Soviets had little to no choice on accepting the terms given their immediate internal domestic realities . But both would seek to, in their mind, “set things to rights” as soon as they had a chance. In Europe’s case, it took about 20 years for this to happen.

Next week we look at the Communist Revolution in Russia, and touch on the ‘Roaring 20’s back in America.

This week we focused on The Persian Wars, a conflict that historians claim marks a transition point between Eastern and Western dominance. Persia staked a lot of their invasion, and their failure would lead to the rise of Greece in general, and Athens in particular. Our main focus Thursday and Friday lay with the Battle of Salamis, one of the more crucial naval engagements of the ancient world. As I mentioned back in September, one of the things we focus on this year and throughout the history curriculum is how to make choices. This can be applied in a variety of different settings, and this week I wanted the students to consider that on the level of strategy and tactics.

The Fleets

The Persian fleet was bigger, with a variety of incorporated Greek city-states that had surrendered to Persia. Ionians, Phonecians, Egyptians and more went into the mixture. In general, their ships were lighter and faster. Athens controlled the Greek fleet, and in general they had heavier, bulkier ships. But the weight of the ships did perhaps produce an innovation, that of a ramming prow. This in turn, led to a change in how the Athenians fought. Whereas most ancient navies wanted to get close and board other ships, the Athenians wanted to use their prow to ram other ships and sink them with a broadside charge.The Persians had sacked Athens, and the Athenians in desperation abandoned their city, got in their boats, and headed for the island of Salamis.

The Questions:

Would an immediate battle be more to the Persians advantage, or the Greeks?

If a battle were to be fought, what side would have the advantage in wide open water? What about in more narrow confines?

I enjoyed the student responses to this question, and most of them did get around to seeing that

Battle now definitely favored the Greeks, and

The geography of the Bay of Salamis definitely favored the Greeks.

Why?

The Athenians needed a battle. The Persians did not. With Athens abandoned they could have simply occupied the city, and hemmed in the fleet at Salamis. If they wait eventually a tired and bedraggled fleet would have to come out of hiding and face the Persians on their terms. Fighting in the bay itself would mean narrower corridors where the Persians could not use their numbers and speed to their full effect. Think of a heavier boxer vs. a lighter, quicker opponent. The heavier one (Athens) seeks to trap or corner the other to take away his advantage. By fighting in the bay, the Persian fleet gave up much of its advantage.

The Result

Again, with so many of our choices there are no guarantees. We must weigh the options and make our best guess. But it is important not to choose blindly. So why then, did the Persians attack the Greeks?Here we are back, at least possibly, to the personality of Xerxes. We saw that both Herodotus and the Book of Esther show us a king who was not wicked, but perhaps indolent, and someone who tended to flit from one thing to another. Note that Esther 1 begins by describing lavish parties amidst opulent splendor. Herodotus mentions that Xerxes wanted the invasion over as soon as possible. Ideally, of course, the Persians should have bottled up the fleet, entrenched themselves in the city, and watch Athens suffocate to death. When Themistocles sent a messenger to lie to the Persians about the disorder in the Greek ranks, the Persians jumped at the chance and moved into the bay to attack. Xerxes seems a suggestible, impatient type. “Let’s get this over with. . .” The result was a complete victory for the Greeks. It turned the tide of the whole Persian invasion. Having been smacked on the nose, Xerxes decided enough was enough. He withdrew most of his navy from the region. His infantry at current levels could not live off the land in Greece, and besides, winter approached. Without the navy to supply them, Xerxes withdrew a good portion of his troops back to Persia. The Battle of Platea in 479 BC would, for all intents and purposes, finish them off.

The “Center of Gravity”

Clausewitz used the term “center of gravity” to describe what one colonel described as a “factor of balance” in a campaign. This does not have to be something purely physical, but in this case, the “factor of balance” in the Persian Wars would surely include control of the sea. In invading Greece en masse as they did, Persia made naval superiority a key to the campaign. But for about 75 years prior to this they concentrated their strength on their infantry. They did not play to their strength. But we might also conclude that the whims of Xerxes would constitute part of the “center of gravity.” The Book of Esther gives us clues. Note how casually he decides on the Jews destruction, and how quickly he reverses course. Of course, it’s good that he changed his mind! My point, however, is that Xerxes never seemed fitted for the role of a noble kingly persona. He would much rather not be bothered. In every conflict, the hidden factor can often be each combatant’s internal political system. In this case, the nascent democracy of Athens had an advantage over the indolent monarchy of Persia.

]]>https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/16/8th-grade-finding-the-persian-center-of-gravity/feed/0dmathwinBay of Salamishttps://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/16/8th-grade-finding-the-persian-center-of-gravity/Sherlock Holmes and the Solar Systemhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AStickInTheMud/~3/t50wksKVknA/
https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/09/sherlock-holmes-and-the-solar-system/#respondSat, 09 Feb 2019 17:48:26 +0000http://astickinthemud.com/?p=1788I knew I would like E.M.W. Tillyard’s book The Elizabethan World Picture early on when Tillyard references Shakespeare’s famous, “What a piece of work is a man,” speech from Hamlet. He writes,

This has been taken as one of the great English versions of Renaissance humanism, an assertion of human dignity over medieval asceticism. Actually, it is within the purest medieval tradition.

Hah! Take that those who exalt the Renaissance over all else! Tillyard goes on to add how Shakespeare writes within the medieval “chain of being” tradition, which they derived from the Church fathers. He could have added something about Psalm 8, but we’ll let it slide.

Tillyard talks about how he began the book trying to get at the context of Shakespeare, but found that his subject grew on him until he found he had to continually peel back layers of the onion. It’s hard not to gain a kind of fascination and admiration for the medieval view of reality, and this is the book’s real subject.

C.S. Lewis tackled the exact same thing in his excellent The Discarded Image. Tillyard’s book lacks the depth and insight of Lewis, but his writing is also much more accessible. I wish I had started with him first. The fact that so much of the book deals with the medieval view of the world rather than strictly the Elizabethan stands as one of Tillyard’s main arguments. Yes, the Reformation broke with certain things from the past, but in the main they kept much of the medieval synthesis intact. The Scientific Revolution, not the Reformation, ended that view of the world.

The medievals borrowed from the classical tradition, Scripture, and the Church fathers to give themselves a very distinct world filled to the brim with sharp corners. Their universe had

Order and Unity: Everything had its place, everything played a part. In that sense it was crowded, with nothing out of place. But it was purposeful.

Sin and Progress: Medieval people believed in the reality of the first, but the possibility of the latter. A healthy tension resulted from a clear view of human folly on one hand, and the love of God on the other. Tillyard writes,

This is one of things that most separates the Elizabethan from the Victorian world. In the latter there was a general pressure of opinion in favour of the doctrine of progress: the pessimists were in opposition. In the Elizabethan world equal pressure existed on both sides, and the same person could be simultaneously aware of each.

In our day, we seem to believe in nothing in particular, though a belief in progress and progress alone would I’m sure be more insufferable.

Hierarchy: The “Chain of Being” meant that an infinitely long descending ladder from God down to the creatures far beneath the sea. Earth itself had a rather humble spot on this ladder. But the main feature here were the connections. Air had superiority to earth, and earth to water. Air is linked to water through earth, and so on.

The system had many advantages. Tillyard includes many quotes from the period and one immediately realizes how much authors had to work with and build upon. They could know that their audience would understand a multitude of sacred and secular references, and have a shared view of the world. Modern authors have to do so much more work for much less assumed reward. Tolkien had to create an entirely new world to write an epic.

But we should be careful not to romanticize such a world. Their cosmology did not directly conflict with Christian teaching, but neither was it inherently Christian, and as such left much to be desired. It was so crowded one did not have much space to maneuver. The only ones who seemed to have that freedom were fairies, and their role in redemptive history remained undefined — not a good place to be. Such a cosmology might easily arise in a time that begged for stability in the aftermath of the Dark Ages, and just as easily would wear out its welcome in due course, and even Shakespeare had his fun with it just as he depended upon it. Tillyard quotes from Twelfth Night in a revealing passage that links parts of the body with constellations:

Sir Toby Belch: I did think by the excellent constitution of thy leg it was formed under the star of a galliard.

Sir Andrew Aguecheek: Ay, tis’ strong, and it does indifferently well in a flame-coloured stock. Shall we set about some revels?

Sir T: What shall we do else? Were we not born under Taurus

Sir A: Taurus: that’s sides and heart.

Sir T: No, sir, it is legs and thighs.

Tillyard comments,

Characteristically both speakers are made to get the association wrong; and Shakespeare probably knew that to Taurus were assigned neck and throat. There is irony in Sir Toby being right in a way he did not mean. He meant to refer to dancing — legs and thighs — but the drinking implied by neck and throat is just as apt to the proposed revels. The present point is that the serious and ceremonious game of the Middle Ages has degenerated into farce.

This clip from the excellent Sherlock series from BBC recalls Holmes’ famous quote on his knowledge of the solar system:

Who wants to disagree with Sherlock Holmes? But he is wrong — one’s view of the solar system does matter. We have yet to find a workable replacement for Ptolemy and the medievals, and this surely has impacted our cultural life as a whole, and our individual sense of our place in the world. Like Major Tom, we float aimlessly and need to find a place to stand.

]]>https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/09/sherlock-holmes-and-the-solar-system/feed/0dmathwinBook Jackethttps://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/09/sherlock-holmes-and-the-solar-system/Maybe We Don’t Stink at Parentinghttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AStickInTheMud/~3/N3btEUOiLmY/
https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/09/maybe-we-dont-stink-at-parenting/#respondSat, 09 Feb 2019 16:48:29 +0000http://astickinthemud.com/?p=2581A mantra thrown around the column circuit from time to time is the idea that, back in the good old days, parents were parents and children were taught responsibility, duty, and thrift. Scenes like this no doubt abounded. . .

Embedded in this picture is the idea that adolescence as a distinct stage of life was an invention of the Victorians in the mid-19th century. This essentially artificial creation of a previously non-existent stage then created all sorts of problems that we deal with in the modern world, as our youth postpone “growing up” well beyond what is “normal,” or at least what existed before the Victorians ruined everything. Many commentators point to the laws against child-labor, and the increase of wealth during the late 19th century that allowed for children to have more leisure, and so on. The argument makes sense logically.

In her book The Life Cycle of Western Europe, ca. 1300-1500 (“Take courage,” I thought to myself as I picked it up, “The book can’t possibly be as boring as the title.”), Deborah Youngs sets out, at least in part, to debunk this modern notion. The medievals viewed life as happening in 4-5 distinct stages, with different expectations for each stage. Childhood, and yes, adolescence, has its roots far beyond the Victorians. Logical, common sense must give way to the historical record.

Youngs crafts no narrative but her book managed to hold my interest due to the surprising amount of information she gives you in a short book. Thus, while her work contains no lofty insights, it gives the reader plenty to chew on. Among some of the highlights:

The medievals in general were much less concerned with one’s actual age, however much they fixated on “stage of life.” When Henry IV of France sought an annulment of his marriage based on the fact that he was too young to give legal consent, no one could remember exactly when he was born. Opinion varied — some said he was 12 at the time of the betrothal (which would have allowed an annulment) and some said he was 15 (he would have to stay married).

Adolescents (12-18) were universally acknowledged to be in an irresponsible stage. Medieval literature expected erratic behavior from them. They simply had too much “heat” in their bodies and too little reason to control it. Many of us might have an image of an authoritarian and rigid medieval culture, but to my mind they were surprisingly tolerant. For example, boys who engaged in homosexual activity under 18 were given a “free pass” of sorts. After 18, not so much. Some might not find this “tolerant” at all. But if you account for the fact that they believed homosexual behavior to be a great sin, then by their standards they were tolerant, at least in this respect.

Some might guess that medieval culture expected all to be “saints” from the toddler years on, but again, the data confounds our expectations. The key for them was “acting your age.” Each stage came with certain expected behaviors. True, acting outside these expectations brought censure, but this held true even with “good” behavior. For example, regarding piety, they had a saying: “Young saints make old devils.” Those who have read Belloc’s The Path to Rome might recall him saying that he always felt much more comfortable when altar boys made faces at each other rather than standing with scrupulous and solemn attention to duty. If boys were boys, he took it as a sign that all was right with the world.

In this way, some medievals had more of a sense of “stages of life” than most moderns, who see human nature as more fungible than those in the past.

Youngs argues for no main thesis, but underneath her writing runs the current of the universality of human nature. We lack a sense of the past, and this opens us up to think unrealistically about the present. We exaggerate our virtues, vices, problems, and successes. Youngs reminds us that six year olds have always been noisy, and that twelve year olds have never been responsible. Parents, take heart, we are not alone.

Most of their ideas regarding “stages of life” bear a general similarity to ours, with one exception: the final stage. I think if you asked most people what kind of death they preferred they would answer, “Quick and painless.” Medievals had a different perspective. A quick death robbed one of the chance to prepare, to “pack” for the final journey. Medievals wanted the chance to reconcile with God and man, and provide a firm legal pathway for their relatives. Here I think they had an advantage over us. In general they did not ignore or flee from death, but called a spade a spade. Again we are faced with the possibility that medievals did a better job facing reality than we do currently.

We did not cover a lot of new ground this week, but did manage to introduce the basic premise of feudal society.

Imagine you had the following choices at age 16:

Option 1: You have the maximum possibility of social and professional mobility. A variety of opportunities will be open to you. Therefore, there is the possibility of great success and the “life of your dreams.” However, there are no guarantees, and no safety net. What you achieve will be up to you and up to circumstances. Perhaps you fail, and be left destitute with nothing.

Option 2: You will be guaranteed a basic middle class life that conforms to our image of the 1950’s. You will have a house, 2 cars, and 2.5 children. You will live in a community where people know you and will look out for you, but your ability to move jobs and locations is significantly restricted. You may not love your job, but it will not be horrible. You will be able to work at your job for many years and retire modestly.

What would you choose? Most students chose door #1, but some definitely preferred the security of #2.

Neither option is right or wrong per se, but each option does reflect different values. We distribute the benefits of each this way:

The Modern West

Opportunity

Individuality

Mobility

Feudal Europe

Stability and Security

Community

A sense of “place,” a “rhythm of life”

When I surveyed the students about the jobs of their parents, many of them had held at least 2-3 different ones over their lives already, and this represents a slight difference, I think, from my parents generation. Many of my friends that are my age have already held 2-3 different jobs. It seems that are moving more and more in the direction of increased social mobility, which may translate into a lesser degree of social stability. If I’m right we will have to wait and see what this will mean for us in the future.

Whatever we choose, we must realize that to some extent these choice are mutually exclusive. We cannot have unlimited opportunity and a maximum amount of security. We cannot have strong communities and great mobility. We must choose, and whatever our choice, we need to own the consequences of those choices.

For example, there is much that we find distasteful about the feudal idea of birth and class. It runs directly counter to many ideas we hold dear. But to be born into nobility was to be born into responsibility. You would have many tenants on the land, but their condition reflected on you. At least in theory, a sense of mutual obligation existed between noble and peasant.

Today we have (in theory) no difference in class, but also no sense of obligation to others, and our physical mobility makes it hard for many of us to connect in our neighborhoods. This leads us to rely a great deal on money as a means of security, as we have no “social network” to fall back upon. Our societies do have places and programs for the poor, but as they are often run by the state, they can have a distinctly impersonal feel to them. Plus, most of us do not interact with the poor on any regular basis, whereas in medieval times, the poor had a much greater chance to be part of a community.

A key to understanding medieval society is the idea of “knowing one’s place.” We can imagine the evil person in every Disney movie telling some plucky young child to “know your place,” but it had a different connotation in the medieval period. The medieval view of society resembled something of a jig-saw puzzle. No matter how unique each piece might be, it has a specific role within the whole. When Jesus says, “the poor you will always have with you,”

We would say that the poor will always be with you because of social injustice, economic injustice, or the presence of sin in general, while

Medievals probably would argue that we will always have the poor because we will always need opportunities to exercise charity (the poor demonstrate the virtue of humility in receiving charity), just as some have money in order to exercise liberality. Both are necessary because both are meant to image/reflect different aspects of the Christian life to us.

I do not mean here to romanticize feudal society, but only to point out that their structure gave them a good chance of doing some things better than the modern west does currently.

This week we looked at the esteemed Athenian statesman Solon.The ancient world regarded Solon as a great sage, but as we saw, his head was not in the clouds. He took a society ready to fly apart at the seams and left it with an established social context in which democracy could take root. I wanted to highlight a few key lessons.

First, the background:

Before Solon there was Draco, a member of the Athenian aristocracy. His name itself came to symbolize harsh governmental policy, i.e. a ‘Draconian’ law. His policies helped cement the divide between rich and poor and threatened to make it wider. This dynamic is not unusual. When one group in society separates itself from others because of wealth or status, they tend to fear the rest of society, and thus, isolate themselves all the more. This increased distance only requires more force to ensure the divide. One can think of the ante-bellum South, for example, and various laws enacted that made it a crime to educate slaves. Society built like this can’t last for long.

Enter Solon.

He recognized a few key things:

Society needs the rich. One can argue that the rich abused their power but they are still Athenian. Secondly, their resources can benefit Athens. If we heal the fear between the two groups we can create opportunity for the wealthy to feel a bit more free with their resources.

The divide between rich and poor must be healed if we are to survive. This will require sacrifice from the rich

This led to what may have been Solon’s invention, and may not have been — an early version of a graduated income tax.

No one likes to pay taxes. One of the reasons for this is that no one really knows where their money goes. It gets dropped into a vast ocean, never to be heard from again. Solon did things differently. He did not ask for a direct sum from the wealthy, but offered them an opportunity. The wealthy could fund specific projects. They could just pay directly for a religious festival, a bridge, or a naval warship. Of course, they could also get full credit for their funding, i.e., ‘This festival to Athena sponsored by Diodotus.’ So, paying taxes became a way to earn ‘kleos.’ The wealthy could contribute in how much they gave. Enhancing the well being of Athens was directly connected with enhancing their own status in the community. Solon therefore made paying ones taxes a way for the wealthy to maintain and even enhance their “kleos.”

We should not view this as “taxes,” in any sense of the modern world. First of all, they were not precisely calculated to income, only loosely. Secondly, they came with no direct legal obligation. Solon erected a social framework where aristocratic status came with a kind of obligation, perhaps an early form of noblesse oblige. We see this idea reflected in various ways up until quite recently in the western world, the idea that you demonstrated your status by public service.

Problem solved.

Could this apply today? We are much too big to do what Solon did on any appreciable scale. Yet I wonder, with the ‘Occupy’ movement and other kinds of resentment against the wealthy building, if we couldn’t borrow his ideas. What if we did this for the very rich, and put their faces on front pages with captions like, “Warren Buffet posing with fighter jet paid for with his taxes,” or something like this. Would this help?

But, we should note that if we had a competition of fame/honor in paying taxes to the government, that would imply a certain relationship and attitude towards our government. As we discussed, what we think of Solon in parts depends on what one thinks about the purpose of law and government. Many of us think from a Roman context where law has an essentially “negative” character; i.e., the law tells you what not to do. Greek concepts of law had different goals in mind. The Greeks saw law as a tool to help shape the souls of individuals and communities. Greek law did not alwys say, “You must do this,” (with Sparta as an exception), but it did seek to produce certain definite outcomes.

Solon did not create democracy in Athens, but he established a context for it to exist. Democracy cannot exist everywhere. If the majority have an “us v. them” attitude then they will use their power to get revenge or exploit the “them,” whether they be rich or poor, black or white, etc. In this environment, society will become cancerous and destroy itself. Democracy can only really work when the power of the majority does not just represent merely the majority, but in some sense all the people. In our own age of bitter partisanship and resistance to compromise, we would do well to take Solon’s wisdom to heart.

Blessings,

Dave Mathwin

]]>https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/09/8th-grade-solon-and-the-occupy-movement/feed/0dmathwinSolon of Athenshttps://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/09/8th-grade-solon-and-the-occupy-movement/The Royal Touchhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AStickInTheMud/~3/xKvemDYMxCE/
https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/02/the-royal-touch/#respondSat, 02 Feb 2019 17:45:17 +0000http://astickinthemud.com/?p=8753As often as we may try and manage and control our experience of the world around us, we cannot avoid reality breaking into our lives from time to time. Our secular age orients itself almost entirely around making our day to day lives workable and enjoyable on a strictly horizontal level. We have long since abandoned ultimate “vertical” questions as unwieldy and unhelpful towards this end. But then, the fact of death itself strikes us occasionally with great force. As we have no common liturgies surrounding death, and no common way to experience loss, death lingers among us like a fog. So too, the 2016 election in some ways exposed the thin veneer of our “horizontal” happiness, and ever since we have had to try and deal with the unconscious, sometimes darker Jungian aspects of our selves and our body politic.

Like life, history sometimes breaks in on us with sudden and unusual force.

One begins Henry of Huntingdon’s History of the English People:1000-1154like any other medieval history book, and it reads similarly to other works in this genre. Henry was nobleman with a good education in the Latin classics and knew Scripture well, and it shows. He describes the political scene of his time with care and skill, and dances around enough hot-button issues of the day to make scholars wonder about his motives from time to time. All of this falls well within the range of “normal” history.

But then . . .

On page 48 (Oxford Classics Edition) he drops in this comment when discussing the abrupt death of the rogue King William:

In the year 1100 King William ended his cruel life in a wretched death. For when he had gloriously, and with historic pomp, held his court at Gloucester at Christmas, at Winchester at Easter [April 1], and in London on Whitsun [Pentecost], he went to hunt in the New Forest on 2 August. There Walter Tirel, aiming at a stag, accidentally hit the king with an arrow. The king was struck in the heart, and fell without uttering a word. A little earlier blood was seen to bubble up from the ground in Berkshire.

William was rightly cut off in the midst of his injustice. For in himself, and because of the counsels of wicked men, whom he invariably chose, he was more evil to his people than any man, and most evil to himself . . .

“A little earlier blood was seen to bubble up . . . ” What are we to make of this? Yes, Henry wants to make a theological point, and some may feel the temptation to explain it away as allegorizing. But he also carefully mentions specific dates and specific places, and he does not write in a “Once upon a time,” fashion. Well, perhaps we could sweep this oddity under the rug as scribal error or flight of fancy. The casual, offhand nature of his remark, however, makes this an unlikely choice.

And then, a bit later in the book (p. 83):

In this year [1144], Earl Geoffrey de Mandeville harassed the king exceedingly, and in everything he did basked in vainglory. But in the month of August the splendor of God showed forth a miracle worthy of His justice. For He inflicted similar punishments on men who forcibly removed two monks and turned God’s churches into castles. Robert Marmion–a warlike and evil man–had carried this out in the church of Coventry, and Geoffrey, as I have already said, perpetrated the same crime in Ramsey. Robert Marmion, attacking his enemies in front of the monastery itself, was the only man killed, although he stood in the midst of a huge squadron. As an excommunicate, he is being devoured by eternal death.

In the same way Earl Geoffrey, among the ranks of his own . . . was struck by an arrow from a foot-soldier. He scoffed at the wound, but after a few days died of this injury, excommunicate. See how the vengeance of God . . . is made known throughout the ages, and is executed in the same way for the same crime! While the church in Ramsey was being held as a castle [by the Earl] blood bubbled out of the walls of the church and the adjoining cloister, clearly demonstrating the divine wrath and prophesying the destruction of the wrong-doers. Many witnessed this, and I myself saw it with my own eyes.

Though Henry has theological points to make, this in no way should blunt the force of his report. He mentions himself along with others as eyewitnesses to this additional sighting of blood. Unless we wish to say he lied outright twice, we must consider whether our conception of how God, man, and nature interact needs abruptly altered.

Marc Bloch rightly deserves his reputation as one of the great scholars of the feudal era. He has a rare knack for simply dealing with the texts before him without much evident preconception. His book, The Royal Touch offers just such another slap of cold water, as he reminds us of the copious textual evidence for the power medieval kings possessed, at least at certain times, to heal their subjects. Bloch’s Wikipedia page describes him as a “thoroughly modern” historian in outlook, and as he was Jewish, we would assume he has no particular theological axe to grind. This makes his presentation all the more striking.

We may surmise that the medievals lived in an “age of faith” which made them credulous.* Bloch will not allow this. Medieval people may have had different standards of what constituted proof, but they argued over the evidence. He cites William of Malmsbury’s (a respected historian in his own right) account of the miracles of St. Edward the Confessor:

But now to speak of the miracles of St. Edward. A young woman had married a man but had no children, and the humors gathered about her neck, she contracted a sore disorder. Admonished in a dream to the have the affected parts washed by King Edward himself, she entered the palace and the king did as she wished. Joyous health followed his healing hand–the lurid skin opened so that worms flowed out with the putrid matter, so that the tumor subsided. Nothing of the original wound could be found after many weeks, and she soon gave birth to twins. She increased the admiration of Edward’s holiness.

A certain man, blind, persisted in walking around the palace, certain that he should be cured if he could touch his eyes with water in which Edward had washed. This was related to Edward, who looked angrily upon the man, confessing himself sinner, and that the works of holy men did not belong to him.

But his servants tried the experiment when he was ignorant of it, praying in church. They gave some water to the blind man, upon which the darkness fled from him and his eyes filled with light.

That you may know the perfect virtue of this prince, I will excite your wonder still more. Wulwin, surnamed Spillecorn, one day cut wood and fell blind as a result, perhaps because of his excessive sleep after his labors. He was admonished in a dream to go round to 87 churches, and earnestly entreat relief from his blindness from the saints.

At last he came to the king’s court, where he remained for a long time, being held back by the king’s men. Finally he received admittance, whom after he had heard the dream, answered mildly, “By my lady St. Mary, I shall be truly grateful, if God, through my means, shall choose to take pity upon you.” Though with no confidence in himself with respect to miracles, yet he placed his hand, dipped in water, on the blind man.

In a moment blood flowed from his eyes and the man restored to sight, cried, “I see you O king, I see you!” In this recovered state he was given charge of the royal castle at Windsor, for that is where his cure was effected. He held this job many years, having outlived his restorer.

In our day, some have used the miracles of King Edward to support a false idea. They have claimed that the king possessed this power to heal illness, not by virtue of his holiness, but by hereditary title, as a privilege of the royal line.

Bloch comments, that

This is a doubly valuable observation, because it informs us of both William’s ideas and of the very different ones held by his contemporaries. They disagreed about why he had power to heal, but not about the fact that he did heal.

So this text (and there are others like it) will not leave us the “out” they lacked critical thought.

Eyewitness accounts to miracles like this date back many centuries, with Gregory of Tours (another respected historian) perhaps with the first written account of this phenomena in ca. A.D. 540:

It was commonly related among the faithful that a certain woman whose son lay stretched out upon a bed of pain, suffering from fever, made her way through the crowd from behind the king, and without his noticing it, managed to pull off part of the fringe of the royal cloak. She soaked it in water, and then gave this water to her son to drink.

The fever immediately abated, and the disease was cured.

For my part, I do not doubt this matter. For indeed I have often seen demons who inhabit the bodies of those possessed cry out in the name of the king, and being unmasked by the virtue proceeding from him, confess their crimes.

Bloch considers many important questions in the book. One major topic of discussion and disagreement among medieval chroniclers had to do with whether or not

The power to heal came exclusively from the dignity and chrism of the office itself, or

If such grace to heal required personal sanctity in addition to the chrism of kingship.

But again, no debate existed as to whether or not such healings in fact took place.

Bloch also wonders why such miracles seem confined the French and English monarchies. Perhaps it happened elsewhere, but we have little to no textual evidence to support it. We might also plausibly wonder why it reports of such miracles slowed considerably during the 17th century and cease practically altogether in the 18th.

For that matter, we not see blood bubble up from the ground anymore either.

Such questions are certainly uncomfortable, but we should not ignore them. Amidst its sometime “one thing after another” tedium, History can occasionally wake us up and show us a different world.

Dave

*”Stupid” is a less polite, but more accurate description of what those that use this word really mean in such contexts.

]]>https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/02/the-royal-touch/feed/0dmathwinhttps://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/02/the-royal-touch/Gods of the Sideways Worldhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AStickInTheMud/~3/tXcrDMm5638/
https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/02/gods-of-the-sideways-world/#respondSat, 02 Feb 2019 17:38:24 +0000http://astickinthemud.com/?p=8960Many across the political spectrum seem to feel that things in the U.S. have gone crazy, or upside-down. Those on the left marshall Triump’s presidency, Charlottesville, and the Kavannaugh hearings, to prove their point, while those on the right do so with transgenderism, campus snowflakes, and . . . their own perspective on the Kavanaugh hearings.*

It appears that we can look at the same thing and not see the same thing.

Different theories exist to explain our predicament. Some trace the beginnings of it all to Bush’s controversial foreign wars, others to the rise of the internet, or the Clinton presidency, or to the end of the Cold War. Peter Thiel postulated that our cycles of cultural leaders skipped Generation X and went from the boomers–who artifically held on too long to power–straight to the millennials.** Thus, lacking “Generation X” to mediate the generation gap, we jerk awkwardly to and fro like a record skipping across a turntable.

We can give all these theories their due. But I wonder if we may be witnessing something more fundamental. Without knowing it, akin to frogs in the pot, we are experiencing the final stages of the life in a vertical world, which existed in every ancient civilization up until the 17th century, and seem ready to fully embrace the victory of the sideways world, which has been gaining ground steadily since that time.

One can say anything in blogs . . . but, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.”

Mattheiu Pageau’s (brother of the more famous Jonathan Pageau) The Language of Creation has all the appearance of quackery. The book has no reviews or endorsements on the back cover. The book has no footnotes, or even a bibliography, despite the obvious fact that he draws heavily on early Christian and Jewish sources. This sends shivers down my spine and I can think of no defense for it. While some parts of the book desperately needed footnotes to have a shot at convincing me, the opening several chapters made complete sense, and the book in a general way hits its target by helping one to reimagine the world. Once embarked with The Language of Creation, it is probably best to turn to St. Ephrem the Syrian and St. Maximos the Confessor for surer guides.

The key to Pageau’s thoughts, and indeed to much of the ancient and medieval world, lies in how we conceive of our experience of space.

Everyone who has read Ender’s Game realizes that space has no up or down, at least in a scientific or absolute sense. But we must order our sense of space to exist in it, and that involves choices on our part, choices that upon closer examination are not arbitrary. And since we must choose, we should be struck by the fact that everyone (in the west at least) up until the present day concieved of the cosmos as heirarchical, as up and down.^

And it may be no coincidence that our current depiction of the solar system conceives it as existing horizontally, and not heirarchically.

This choice of how we depict the cosmos was certainly intentional in older civilizations, and we can fairly assume that it remains intentional today.

There is a difference. The order and shape we give to the space around creates a framework for meaning.

The up/down nature of reality helps us understand creation and our experience of the world in many different ways:

Creation

We first note in Genesis 1 that God resides “above the waters,” above that is, undifferentiated, unformed chaos. The immensity of God cannot be contained, thus He must mediate our experience of Himself for us to know Him at all.

Creation happens through speech, and not coincidentally. Speech gives form to thoughts and ideas, it gives them a public reality.

Plants grow from seeds. The seed falls from above, containing the “idea” of the plant, the entirety of the plant’s particulars.

Seeds bury themselves in the earth, which produces the manifestation, the “incarnation” of the idea in more variety.

Man

The upright nature of man is also no coincidence. It separates us from other creatures (while at the same time, giving us no evolutionary advantage per se. Many robotics designers have pointed out how inefficient the design of the human body is). But it also corresponds to heirarchy–the intellect is above and governs the body below. Our thoughts move as the thoughts of angels, thus the “heavenly” nature of our intellect. Our “earthy” parts are lower and more chaotic. Our appetites need structure. Our “heart,” which lies between our heads and our bellies, serves as the mediator and point of unity between the two, between “heaven” and “earth.” The structure of our bodies, then, gives us a clue as to the meaning of space.

Man himself serves as the mediator of creation, a priesthood meant to image God to all of creation. As a hybrid creature of Earth and Heaven, we stand between both worlds.

Language

Language itself serves as a kind of union of heaven and earth. We have “”heavenly” thoughts in our intellect. We take bits of “earth” in the form of random marks, and arrange them into a pattern to make letters. We then further organize them into words, and so on.

Language, then, takes earthly random particulars and gives them structure and distinction from above–according to ideas, principles, etc. We make ideas manifest through language.

Christ Himself

One could go on and on seeing the extent of this pattern, but all of these patterns cohere most fully in Christ Himself. He “came down from Heaven,” (John 6:38, the Nicene Creed) as the Word of God, but then took on human nature through the Virgin Mary. After His death He went even “lower” down and, “descended into hell” (as in the Apostles Creed). His ressurection and ascencion^^ complete the redemptive process of descending and ascending, a link back to Jacob’s ladder.

Such was the view of the world, more or less, from at least the time of Nero down to the 16th century.

The Copernican Revolution certainly transformed how we view the cosmos, but the hierarchical nature of reality could have been maintained. I cannot trace the exact time we started to depict the solar system horizontally, but perhaps we have an inkling now that this change involved more than mere astronomy. Perhaps a trend towards this leveling can be seen, starting from this depiction in the 18th century

which still seems to preserve a sense of heirarchy, and then 100 years later we see

which seems to advance the leveling process a bit further. Of course the present day, (as seen above) completes the progression towards a flat world.

The leveling of the cosmos presaged a levelling of society, and the ushering in of chaos and confusion. Geographically speaking, both oceans and deserts represented chaos for the ancient and medieval world–i.e., both areas have no visibile differentiation in their form, and we cannot live there. With chaos comes death. For to understand anything and understand its meaning, we need differentiation and distinction. Again, this is one of the main teachings of Genesis 1. The same holds true of society in general. The early phases of dismantling existing heirarchies and norms come with great excitement. Maybe the old forms had run their course, maybe change was overdue. But the dismantling of all distinctions between up and down, creation and creature, men and women, etc. will usher in a blindness that will hinder our ability to understand the world God made and to understand God Himself. Without this foundation, we will hardly be able to understand each other.

Since we cannot live in chaos, we will soon find that heirarchy will have to return. Given our seeming embrace chaos (i.e. a world with no heirarchy and no distinctions), it may end up returning with a vengeance. We already can see what distorted forms it might take. Those on the far left would make the most marginalized “victim” king^^^, and those on the far right would repeat Charlottesville en masse. New gods would rule over us.

I believe most people want to avoid both of these extremes, but have no idea what to do about it. Perhaps we can start with the very simple move of thinking about the world as up and down instead of side-to-side.

Dave

*I continue to hope that the world of twitter and political commentating is merely a distorted reflection of the real world we all inhabit. Indeed, I have come across very few in my neighborhood or at church who got terribly bent out of shape one way or the other about Kavannaugh’s nomination.

**Peter Thiel believes that the dearth of viable presidential candidates in their 40’s-50’s in the last election proves this point.

^Like most medieval maps, this does not represent an accurate spatial depiction of the cosmos, but the cosmos as it appears “spiritually” to them in their hearts and minds. Ptolemy’s Almagest was the standard work of astronomy of the Middle Ages and speaks of the Earth as a mathematical point in the universe. But, they represented the Earth as larger than other planets because this is where the drama of the redemption of the cosmos plays itself out.

^^Most churches hardly focus on Christ’s Ascencion and stop at Easter. But the structure and scope of redemption shows us how crucial the Ascencion is, for Heaven and Earth cannot be fully reconciled until Christ presents Himself spotless before the Father. Only after this does the Spirit of God descend that God may dwell within us.

^^^I have no settled thoughts on the trigger warning and micro-aggression phenomena, aside from an obvious distaste for it. But I do wonder at its logic. If victimhood gives one power and the right to speak, would it not serve their interests to increase their victim status by having themselves “assaulted?” Perhaps then, the enthroned victims wish to keep their power by preventing anyone else from gaining status? That would make them like everyone else. Those in power tend to guard it jealously.

]]>https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/02/gods-of-the-sideways-world/feed/0dmathwinhttps://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/02/gods-of-the-sideways-world/Just War as Christian Discipleshiphttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AStickInTheMud/~3/ukrdKCiOnZY/
https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/02/just-war-as-christian-discipleship/#respondSat, 02 Feb 2019 17:11:09 +0000http://astickinthemud.com/?p=3524Methodical. Inexorable. Annoying, sometimes provoking, and yet, ultimately convincing and convicting. All these words sum up my reaction Daniel Bell’s important book on the Christian just war tradition.

First the bad:

Bell could have used a better editor, and bears the hallmarks of a first book from the author. He slides all too often into a repetitive and heavy didactic style, and uses paragraphs chock full of rhetorical questions that pile onto one another. Not as bad as Mr. Chadband from Bleak House, but I might parody this habit of Bell’s thusly:

“And what are we to make of the Gadsden flag motto (used by Marines) “Don’t Tread on Me?” Does it express a sentiment in line with the sacrificial love of Christ? Does it encourage a transformative view of suffering? Would such an attitude lead to just warriors? What kind of motto’s should our soldiers use? Is the church ready to inform the military about such things?”

So this was wearisome.

Bell also never applies his ideas to any particular conflict, which seems too easy for me. Bell espouses some controversial ideas, but I wish he stuck his neck out a bit more and applied his thinking to some actual wars. Granted, the reader can do this for himself, but Bell should have guided the reader a bit more in the interpretation of his ideas.

Despite these weaknesses, the book reminds us that the Church, nations, and militaries have almost completely lost touch with Christian concepts of “Just War” theory and practice. Bell’s book does not condemn war outright. Rather, he seeks to completely reframe the way we examine the issue, which may explain why both pacifist theologians and military chaplains have endorsed his work.

Speaking from a “Just War” tradition within the Church has its limitations. Rarely did any accomplished theologian comment on the issue at length. The Church’s most powerful voices on the topic, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, dealt with just war theory only in an in ad-hoc fashion. Bell points out, however, that while the Church had few official individual voices on the topic, an agreed upon understanding more or less existed from the early days right up until the modern era around the 17th century. Thus, Christians have access not just to Scripture, but also to an authoritative history of understanding of just war, what I will refer to as “The Tradition” in the rest of this post.

Bell’s main argument centers around his assertion that waging “Just War” has much more do with sanctification than a checklist of criteria that then give us justification to act as we please. To fight justly means fighting as a Christian, with love for one’s neighbor and one’s enemy. Fighting justly means not seeking to maximize personal well-being, or national safety, but working for the good of others. Bell rejects pacifism. There are times when acting faithfully might mean using force to achieve just ends. But Bell argues well that if we cannot apply the central truths of the gospel message in how and when we fight, we have no business fighting at all.

This has many implications for us.

Self Defense

Modern understandings of just war often primarily focus on personal self-defense, or defending property, or maintaining a “way of life.” But this approach puts ourselves, or our nation, before others. Thus, “self-defense” can thinly disguise selfishness. As Augustine stated, “Christians should rather be killed than kill, rather suffer harm than harm others.” Charity must prevail even under dire circumstances.

But as happens so often in this book, when you think Bell resolves the issue it deepens. Christians can fight to defend others, particularly those who cannot defend themselves. Christians can put others first by risking their own well-being to serve others.

If we wonder how we tell the difference between defense of self and others, Bell sympathizes. The Tradition gives us no formula, no checklist, and this flows directly from the gospel itself. For example, no checklist can tell you when you love your wife. A husband cannot say, “I bought her flowers and watched the movie she wanted to see. Therefore, I love her, and she should know I love her as long as I continue to do those things.”

What really guides the practice of Just War is not a list but just warriors themselves, who apply the gospel ethic to their situation. This lack of black and white guidance may frustrate us at times, but Bell fears that the checklist mentality will give us carte blanche to do as we please once “the enemy” meets certain conditions. I remember an anecdote about an ex-boxer bothered by a drunk. The drunk hit the boxer a few times, and the boxer responded, “The Lord told me to turn one cheek, and then the other. He said nothing about a third time,” and proceeded to whale away on the unfortunate man.

The Purpose of War

From General Sherman we get the modern view that, “War is all hell.” Those that follow Sherman believe that war remains essentially irredeemable, and making war as short as possible forms much of our strategy as to how we fight.

The Tradition offers another perspective. In one sense we must treat fighting a war like any other activity. We fight wars that we might grow in holiness, that we would grow closer to God. For Christians war should develop the fruits of the Spirit. If it can’t we have no business in it.

This may mean exercising patience. It may mean that we fight in such a way where we give up physical advantages because of the moral problems that may result from our use of these advantages. If we maximize the pain and suffering of our enemy in such a way that minimizes our own, we cannot claim to be just warriors following the call of Christ.

When We Fight

Following Christ means exercising charity towards one’s enemy, and charity requires us to give every reasonable chance to settle differences without violence through diplomatic pursuits. We can use violence only when we know we have given other measures a fair try. This raises questions about the impact of a large, professional, full-time standing army. German theologian Karl Barth (no pacifist) argued that standing armies make it much easier for states to go to war than it should be. Having an army always ready strongly tempts nations to use it much quicker than they ought.

We might reasonably ask whether or not one can exercise love and charity and kill another human being. The Tradition says yes. Justice can never rise to the dignity of the word if it stands separate from love. “The Lord disciplines those He loves.” Using force against another could be an act of charity. You may be preventing them doing evil. Your “discipline” might move them to repentance. Of course, once a person dies they cannot repent. So the Tradition states that while we may at times use force, we must try not to kill our adversaries if we can avoid it. Again Bell urges us to abandon the checklist in favor of Christ-like character. Sometimes a just warrior may kill, but this killing must serve the gospel for the world and, crucially ourselves. We cannot sacrifice our own souls or our own humanity in war. One thinks, for example, of Joan of Arc, weeping over the English dead and praying over their wounded after a battle.

This might reduce the effectiveness of the military. But it would be grossly uncharitable for us to urge that the military de-humanize itself and stand outside the Tradition so that we may be safer. And–a dehumanized military would not serve us well in the long run anyway, and perhaps might even pose a threat to us.

Bell’s calls us all to own the call of “Just War.” The military draws its direction from society, so the public must practice just policies if we want our military to do the same. Again, the “just war” lifestyle is nothing less a Christian lifestyle, and we are all called to this.

In light of the witness of the Tradition, we have much to consider from not only our history (Sherman’s march through the South, carpet bombing in W.W. II, etc.) but also our current practice. We already have extensive moral failures in how we use drones. We waterboard but use the “checklist” mentality and avoid calling it torture. The Guardian reports that we get doctors to harm prisoners by a perverse use of semantics. The full articles is here, but the pertinent quote from it might be,

“Medical professionals were in effect told that their ethical mantra “first do no harm” did not apply, because they were not treating people who were ill.”

This does not mean that soldiers sin more than the rest of us. Rather, soldiers sin in the same spiteful and selfish ways as all of us. And this is part of the point Bell tries to make. Fighting involves the application of our Christian faith just as much as teaching Sunday school. Whatever, our problems as nation, whatever issues we have in the military, all of us own them.

Bell touches on other topics, but at its core, the Tradition calls us back to our primary allegiance to Christ, not victory, the “mission,” expediency, country or tribe. If our main concern is the salvation of our soul and the spread of His Kingdom, we will view war very differently than we do currently. We may need to reevaluate why, when, and how we fight. We may need to adopt the practice of stepping outside our national context and ask if our side even represents justice in the first place. This is what makes Bell’s book so necessary for us, and so difficult to accept. As the Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain wrote,

We have no illusions about the misery of human nature. But we have no illusions, either, about the pseudo-realists who cultivate and exalt evil in order to fight against evil, and who consider the gospel a decorative myth that we could not take seriously without throwing the machinery of the world out of order.

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https://astickinthemud.com/2019/02/02/most-of-the-time-the-world-is-flat/#respondSat, 02 Feb 2019 16:53:24 +0000http://astickinthemud.com/?p=8688Our struggle with economic equality has many roots. For starters, we have the dual affirmation of the values of liberty and equality, something Tocqueville noted as perhaps the key tension in modern democracies. Modern democracies also elevate the status of the individual choice much more highly than traditional societies. This honoring of the individual adds fuel to the free market, which ultimately seeks to commodify our choices. We will likely see laws supporting “traditional” morality, such as those against gambling and certain kinds of drug use, get removed from the books. I read with dismay this article, which indicates that Washington state now allows one to commodify the womb.

The multiplication of choices in the market dovetails with additional freedoms for the individual, and of course we generally want and desire such freedoms. But we cannot have such freedoms and have economic equality at the same time.

The roots of this trend towards an absolute market of things, and even using oneself as an economic object, has origins that predate modern democracies. To have an unending market of things we need to first have control over things, and to establish control the thing must be emptied of its own significance that we might fill it. In his A Secular Age, Charles Taylor observes that it is the homogenization of time and space that makes the modern era (ca. 18th century-today) possible, for it allows us to give our own meanings to our experiences. We can add that our perception of things as mere objects contributes to this trend.

Marcel Mauss’ book The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies poses many questions, such as, “Do books with absurdly boring titles, written by French sociologists, have an inverse or complimentary relationship with the inevitable nerdiness and pomposity of those that read such books?” Sure, having this book in front of you at your local Starbucks will likely make you look like a prig, but for those willing to assume the risk, Mauss has some interesting nuggets to reveal about the economies of the ancient world.

The societies Mauss surveys have an economy, but not ones we might expect. Some minor differences exist between the societies he examines across time and space, but in the main we can say that:

One can never truly own a thing, because the thing (be it a gold coin, a chair, a paddle) has an identity all its own. It is its “own” (ha!) thing before it ever was “your” thing.

One should not keep anything for too long. To do so would risk courting vengeance of a sort from thing itself (some societies had a more magical view of this, some abstracted it a bit more), which “longs” to go to someone else. Our stuff wants to roam wild and free.

One could potentially amass even a great surplus of things, but in end, everyone needed to give things to others and keep the cycle of exchange moving.* This was not mere self-emptying or even generosity per se, because all acknowledged that receiving a gift came with reciprocal responsibilities and burdens.** Failure to reciprocate courted disaster.

Of course these societies had a hierarchy, determined by birth or honorific achievements, or something else, but material wealth got passed around with much more fluidity in the ancient world than today. We may admire this, but quite frankly, we could never replicate it. For starters, we no longer see the world of things as full of meaning. As Taylor observed, in a world of homogeneity only we ourselves can transmit this meaning to things. Again, the concept of magic enters in with some of the early societies, but Mauss delineates between magic and some form of “embodied meaning.” I did not find him terribly clear on this point, but it is a hard concept to describe (and for me to understand). Something has to do with the idea that in the societies Mauss describes one more directly experiences the world. This too is hard to describe, but I would venture that

Today we assume that a thing has no meaning in itself. So its meaning must be mediated or transmitted by layers of society and the self.

Whereas “back then,” our experience of the world and the meaning of the world were one and the same.

We might catch a glimpse of this difference by looking a a different issue.

About four years ago Jonathan Pageau wrote a series of articles about ancient cosmology, and gave his first post the intriguing title, “Most of the Time the World is Flat.” Pageau obviously does not mean to imply that the Earth is not really round, and of course the earth does not change its shape. Rather, he postulates a significant disconnect between what we believe the world/cosmos to actually be like and our everyday experience of it. Science has not given us, and perhaps cannot give us, a workable, experiential model of the world. So we live divided, having to import a meaning to our experience that has no solid reality behind it. He writes,

I would like to propose something that might seem provocative at first, but will hopefully help people see the world with different eyes. There is a growing image on the recent horizon of human experience, it is an image of a family or a group of friends all next to each other at a table or in some other intimate setting, yet all interacting with tablets, ipods and smartphones as if the people around them didn’t exist. I would like to propose that this image, this reality is the final result of Galileo’s cosmological model. Some of you might think I am exaggerating, so I will need to explain.

The Copernican/Galilean worldview, that is the heliocentric worldview and its further development into our modern cosmology of galaxies and nebulas and black holes has two important aspects. It is an artificial vision and it is an alienating vision. It is artificial in the strictest sense of “art” or “techne”. It is a technical vision because we cannot experience this vision without technology, without telescopes and other apparatuses. Because technology is a supplementary thing, a garment of skin, something which we add to our natures in order to physically bolster them toward the material world, it therefore also leads further into the material world itself. (emphasis mine).

. . . modern cosmology is not only artificial, but it is alienating, it moves Man away from himself. Once Man accepted that what he saw through his telescopes and microscopes is more real than his natural experience, he made inevitable the artificial world, he made inevitable as its end the plastic, synthetic, genetically modified, photoshopped, pornographic, social-networked reality we live in. When at the very core of vision, the shape of your cosmos leads you to believe that technology provides a perception which is more true, more real than your experience, more real than walking out of your house and looking at the sky, then the telescope and the microscope will soon be side by side with the camera, the screen and the accelerated time and space of the car window. The metal and glass frame will swallow us and human beings will lose themselves for their incapacity to fully inhabit the world.

Pageau knows that his desired task of reorienting our perspective will likely fail, with a gulf too broad for us to comprehend. Still, I encourage you to read the whole article here and try for yourself.^

It is the strict materialization of our things that creates the gulf between us and our things, which then means we cannot access the economies of the past.

If we wish to regain access to this world, we need a different conception of reality itself. We should take care and not romanticize this version of society. Mauss points out that violence existed in these societies–though probably not because of stark material inequality. The societies he describes sometimes had huge surpluses, which they then sometimes consumed in spectacular fashion. On the other hand, rarely did these societies have much of the technological innovation that we would appreciate. But, if we wish to access this way of life, we need to stop treating the inanimate things we create and consume as mere means to an end. Indeed, we often treat others as a means to an end as part of our contribution to a fallen world. Unfortunately, as the new surrogacy law in Washington state reveals, we are now so completely alienated even from our selves that we will cannibalize our own bodies as a means to an end for ourselves–a bifurcation that puts us far from the world Mauss describes.

“Man is what he eats.” Alexander Schemmann began his classic For the Life of the World quoting this epigram of Fuerbach. One might assume that an Orthodox priest would disagree with this radically materialist statement, but Schemmann turns the quote on its head and argues that with this quote Fuerbach, “expressed the most religious idea of man.” Mere matter does not exist, at least in the way we usually think. Perhaps the place to begin is with the eucharist, for it is here that symbol and reality fuse together most profoundly, and it is here that the world’s transformation begins anew.

Dave

*This reminds a bit of the modern economic idea that money must circulate through society like blood must circulate through the body. Was this Ricardo’s idea originally?

**Norbert Elias talks about aristocrats even as late as the 17th century in Spain who were expected to beggar themselves once every 10-15 years or so by hosting grand feasts for entire villages. After which, the cycle would begin again. This hosting/feasting was a crucial basis of their authority.

^Pageau has since walked back partially some of the “anti-science” approach he takes in this article. He has credited Jordan Peterson with helping him see some possible connections between science and the symbolic worldview.

This week we looked at Spartan civilization and began our look at the beginnings of democracy in Athens. We will have a test next week on Early Greece.

We began our look at Sparta by examining its geography. They had access to a limited water supply via a river, but otherwise a variety of mountains nestled them inland, and they had little contact with the sea. We have seen this kind of geography before — in Assyria. Geography never commands, but it does suggest, and like Assyria, Sparta developed with an almost exclusive focus on warfare. One historian commented

When the Spartans found their ploughlands too narrow for their population, they did not turn their eyes to the sea, like the Corinthians or Megarians. The sea is not visible either from Sparta city or at any point on the Spartan plain. The natural feature which dominates the Spartan landscape is the towering mountain range of Taygetus.

Archeological records indicate a significant shift in Spartan civilization sometime around the year 730 B.C. According to tradition a group of Dorian Greeks invaded Sparta successfully, and became the “new” Spartans, enslaving the locals called Messenians. But they quickly faced a problem. The Messenians vastly outnumbered them and had already attempted one revolt. It seemed likely that other revolts would follow, and eventually they would overwhelm their conquerors.

The Spartans could have retreated, or they could have simply slaughtered the inhabitants and moved on somewhere else. But their solution to the problem seems uniquely Greek to me. They transformed their society by militarizing it, making every male a soldier, allowing themselves to continually have a challenge to master. All this provided extra opportunity for showing “arete,” or, “excellence.” No longer could one choose to be a shoemaker, farmer, and so on. By 620 B.C., after the second war between Sparta and its enslaved population, every male now carried a spear, and the slaves grew the food. Herodotus records one Greek commenting to the Persians in 480 B.C. that

Free though the Spartans are, they are not free altogether. They too serve a master in the shape of Law. They show this by doing whatever their master orders, and his orders are always the same: ‘In action it is forbidden to retire in the face of the enemy forces of whatever strength. Troops are to keep their formation and either conquer or die.

They sacrificed everything to make this happen. Making every male a soldier, and using the slaves to farm did consolidate their conquest. But 1) All traces of cultural creativity disappeared, 2) No personal freedom of job, lifestyle, or travel, was allowed, 3) Boys were separated from their families at a young age, 4) Slave economies lack effeciency, so resources were precious. Any infant deemed physically unfit was usually killed, and so on. Spartan society ‘stopped’ in sense. But they developed the most feared heavy infantry force in ancient Greece, and that was enough to give them power and influence.

This ideal impacted their marriages. They arranged to have the strongest men marry the strongest women to create the best chances of strong sons. If marriages did not produce strong children, they were encouraged to look elsewhere. Women bought into this ideal as well. They spent their time training their bodies to have children.

Their society had all the strength of a high powered rifle bullet. Powerful, yes, but narrow in its application. The Spartans sacrificed what most would consider to be the things that made life worth living, such as personal freedoms, family life, cultural experiences, etc. Truly, you are what you worship.

Was it worth it? Some might argue that their slaves lived better lives than the Spartans. It appears they had more variety in their diet, and possibly more personal freedom as to who they married. Of course, they had harsh lives under the constant watch of Spartan overlords, but did the Spartans live much better? The Spartan world and lifestyle had all the narrowness of slavery. The old adage, “This will hurt me more than it hurts you,” might stand true for the Spartan regime.

Aristotle wrote the best epitaph of the Spartan system, saying,

Peoples ought not to train themselves in the art of war with an eye to subjugating neighbors who do not deserve subjugation. . . . The paramount aim of any social system should be to frame military institutions, like all social institutions, with an eye to peace-time, when the soldier is off duty; and this proposition is borne out by the facts of experience. For militaristic states are apt to survive only so long as they remain at war, while they go to ruin as soon as they complete their conquests. Peace causes their metal to lose its temper; and the fault lies with the social system which does not teach its soldiers what to make of their lives when off duty.

Arnold Toynbee concurred and wrote,

The superhuman–or inhuman–fixity of Sparta’s posture, like the [doom] of Lot’s wife, was manifestly a curse and not a blessing.

We moved forward with W.W. I this week, and this coming week we plan to discuss trench warfare and its companion, chemical warfare.

The map below shows Germany did have Turkey and Austria as allies, but both were very weak, leaving Germany to carry the overwhelming part of the burden against England, France, and Russia. They knew they could not win a long a protracted war. Trench warfare would do nothing if not slow the war down to a grind, and Germany knew that this would work against them.

Germany came up with two tactics to try and tip the scales in their favor: Chemical and Submarine Warfare (we will discuss sub warfare next week).

Chemical weapons were made with gas heavier than air. The idea was that the gas would sink down into the trenches, killing men and perhaps, with high enough concentrations, make the trench unlivable. This would flush them out of the trench, where they were sitting ducks. Germany knew that they could not win a long war. If they wanted victory, they believed, they needed a way to break the stalemate sooner rather than later. Mustard Gas seemed like it might do the trick.

England ruled the waves, and this allowed them to continually supply their troops in France and keep their economy moving forward. Germany’s pre-war challenge to England’s naval supremacy fell short, but subs were a cheaper way to try and eliminate that lead.

Immediately the allied powers regarded both kinds of weapons as unfair and unlawful. Most nations today agree that chemical weapons should be banned, but submarine warfare stuck around and became standard practice. Why do we make this distinction? Is it justified?

In regards to chemical warfare:

It is a different form of killing, but it is a qualitatively different form? Does anything separate being killed by a bullet and killed by gas? Some argue that chemical weapons stay around and linger in the soil. But what about unexploded land mines? Should land mines also be banned? In fact many argue that international treaties should do just that.

Sub Warfare was regarded as cowardly and ‘unsporting.’ It is also was patently ‘unfair,’ as it involved hiding from the enemy giving you an unfair advantage. Thus, in the minds of many, war became murder.

At the back of all these issues is the ‘lawfulness’ of war. Just war theory as it emerged from the early and Medieval church emphasized the ‘proportionality of response.’ But — if you don’t have ships, can subs be a ‘proportional response?’ If you lack the funds to make jets with precision guided weapons, can you instead develop an anthrax bomb? Is that a proportional response? Should war be essentially an affair of honor, like dueling? Or is war really about victory, despite whatever gloss we put upon it? We can also ask if moral action would always lead to victory, and what should a commander in chief do if moral action would make their country lose and suffer? Some students countered back to the original question – ‘Why are chemical weapons less moral than artillery shells?’

By the end of World War I, the European idea of war conducted in a gentlemanly way between ‘civilized’ nations disappeared. Of course this would not be the first time in history that certain ideals about war would erode. Students who had me in the past may recall how the Peloponnesian War ended traditional ways in which the Greeks fought.

Some students thought that you could not introduce chemical weapons, but could use them if someone else did. What is the basis for this distinction, and does it work?

Some thought that Germany’s position of weakness justified their action, but this gets back to the question of whether or not some concept of right action or victory is most important in war. Of course poorer countries today may not like being in an inferior position militarily, and may say that current bans on chemical and biological weapons are simply a way for the rich countries to maintain their advantage.

Whether the aggressor or not, Gemany’s ‘hurry up and win’ tactics hurt them strategically. Their actions against Belgian civilians helped drum up political support for the war in France and especially England. Their use of the submarine would ultimately bring in an entire new country against them, the United States. It appears that for all their tactical success and ability (all agreed that Germans made the best trenches, for example), they lacked a workable long-term vision for how to win the war.

In this post I reviewed the book Just War and Christian Discipleship where author Daniel Bell makes the point that Christians need to abandon the “checklist” approach to war. This attitude reasons based on the idea that, “Because you did ‘x,’ now I can do ‘y.’ Such an approach, Bell argues, abandons the idea of war as a distinctly Christian calling, an activity like any other, designed to bring us closer to Christ. Certainly Bell, I’m sure, would argue that chemical weapons have no place in a Christian concept of war.

Anyway, these questions tackle deep and profound issues that we did not have time to fully explore. However, I was very pleased at the level of student participation and the depth of the discussion.

Blessings,

Dave Mathwin

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https://astickinthemud.com/2019/01/28/fantasy-island/#respondMon, 28 Jan 2019 14:41:08 +0000http://astickinthemud.com/?p=9080I did not grow up watching a lot of TV, as my parents were (thankfully) on the stricter side of things in that regard. Yet, like most everyone else, I watched what I could when they were not around. Almost anything would do when these opportunities struck, and I distinctly remember even watching a few scattered episodes of Fantasy Island. Some of you will remember this show, in which Ricardo Montalban presided over an island resort of sorts, where people would come for vacations. But inevitably, guests would have some kind of unreal and usually traumatic experience, whereby certain unknown issues in their lives would attain resolution. The guests would leave happy, Montalban smiling benignly as they left.

Again, I watched this show even though I never particularly enjoyed it (it was on tv, and that was enough). What’s more, I could never grasp its basic premise or understand what was happening. Were the experiences of the guests real or not? They seemed unreal, but then if unreal, why did people feel so satisfied at the end? How could the island produce just what was needed for each guest (The Lost series, after an intriguing start, definitely borrowed way too much from Fantasy Island in its later seasons)? I remember no explanation, just that, “it had all worked out” somehow in a package that always seemed too neat and tidy

Again, the aggravations I had with the show didn’t prevent me from watching. In my defense, how can one look away from Ricardo Montalblan (still the best Star Trek villain to date)?

Much has been said about the dust-up over the brief video clips from the Pro-Life March involving the “clash” between Catholic high-school students and other protestors. I will say little here, except that

I was glad to see some who made ridiculous and ill-founded statements retract their comments when new, extended video evidence came to light. I wish I saw far more laments that thousands of people rushed to extreme judgment of a 17-year-old after seeing 1 minute of video–in other words, the very exercise of commenting on Twitter “in the moment” is desperately fraught with peril. It wasn’t just that people got it wrong, but that no one should have commented in the first place.*

I basically agree with David Brooks, who argued that 1) this scary and tribal rush to judgment happens on both sides** (this time the left was at fault) , and 2) the problem we have is also a byproduct a new technology (phones and social media) that we must understand more fully and use more wisely.

But as much as I appreciated Brooks’ wisdom, I think he misses something deeper and more fundamental. No one questions the impact of smart phones on how we interact with each other and the world. We should remember, however, that inventions do not simply randomly drop from the sky. They emerge within specific cultural contexts. While the phone was certainly not fated to arise in America, it makes perfect sense that it did. Apple marketed its products with the letter “i” in front, itunes, the ipod, the iMac, and of course, the iphone. Apple wanted one to think of these tools as a way to radically personalize our worlds, which fits within our cultural and political notions of individualism. It’s no surprise that their products made them billions of dollars. They did not create the need for radical personalization of our lives, they tapped into what already existed and helped us expand the horizons of our collective felt need.

I agree that we need to work as a society to understand the technologies we create, but that is just another way of saying we need to understand ourselves.

Harold Bloom’s The American Religion attempts to do just this. He argues that, as diverse as we are religiously, every culture must have some unifying belief, even if this belief remains below the level of consciousness. Bloom states that America is in fact a gnostic nation and not a Christian one, and he defines gnosticism as:

A belief that the physical world is essentially evil, and the “spiritual” is good.

That all people have a “divine spark” within them covered over by experience, culture, history, and materiality (the “all people” part of this is our particular democratization of what was an elitist religion in the ancient world).

We must find a way to liberate our true selves, this “divine spark,” from its constraints. Culture, tradition, history, etc. often stand as enemies in this effort.

Bloom postulates that this faith lies underneath other professed faiths, be they agnostic, Baptist, Jewish, or Mormon. It has invaded and colonized our institutional religions and our overall mindset. He finds it particular present in Southern Baptists of his era, but today he would likely look to the various mega-churches, which operate on the idea that Sundays should be friendly, relatable, accessible, and above all, not “boring.” Ralph Waldo Emerson no doubt helped found our particular version of gnostic faith, writing in 1838 that,

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it . . . . Alone in history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. . . . He spoke of miracles, for he felt that man’s life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this miracle shines as the character ascends.

1838 Divinity School Address

So too William James wrote that

Religion, as I ask you take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. . . . as I have already said, the immediate personal experiences the immediate personal experiences will amply fill our time, and we shall hardly consider theology or ecclesiasticism at all.

“The Variety of Religious Experience, 1902

We could easily sandwich Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself in between these two thinkers for the trifecta of the prophets of non-contextualized, disembodied, American hyper-individualism. This kind of individualism has as its mission liberation from other groups other entities that would seek to mold, shape, and define. And, as we look at the crumbling of institutional churches, our lack of respect for governmental instiutions, the crisis at many universities, etc. we must declare that the individualism of Emerson and Whitman has triumphed almost completely.^

I can think of few things more compatible with this faith than combining Twitter and iphones. We can both memorialize our lives (which are of course special and worthy of documentation) and express our inmost thoughts to the world at any time. Conventions of privacy, or politeness, you say? Sorry, the god of individualism is a jealous god and will brook no rivals for his throne. Do we contradict oursevles and treat others as we would rather not be treated? Well, we are large, to paraphrase Whitman, and contain multitudes. We believe firmly that our souls should have the right to break free at all times.

Thus, if Bloom is correct, if we want to avoid such miscarriages of justice in the future, we may need to do much more than get a better understanding of technology. Brooks is wrong. No quick and mysterious sitcom-like fix is in sight. We need a new religion to avoid such disasters in the future. Our nation, relatively isolated as it is, is still not an island. And, double alas, Ricardo Montalblan is not here to save us.

Dave

*I know that we need journalism, public records of public events, etc., but I will go one step farther. I don’t know why anyone was filming the students in the first place. I know this happens all the time, but it seems to me that you should go to a protest march to protest, not film others protesting. If you want to counter-protest, do so, but don’t go to film others counter-protesting. I agree with Jonathan Pageau, who argued that our incessant desire to mediate our experience through screens fits into the kind of gnosticism Bloom describes. The screen inevitably creates an abstraction, a disconnect between ourselves and reality. He writes,

It is only in the 17th century that men framed their vision with metal and glass, projecting their mind out into an artificially augmented space. Men always had artificial spaces, painting, sculpture, maps, but the telescope and microscope are self-effacing artifices, they attempt to replace the eye, to convince us that they are not artificial but are more real than the eye. It is not only the physical gesture of looking at the world through a machine that demonstrates the radical change, though this is symbolic enough, but it is the very fact that people would do that and come to the conclusion that what they saw through these machines was truer than how they experienced the world without them.

from his “Most of the Time the World is Flat,” a post for the Orthodox Arts Journal

**I am basically conservative and run mostly in conservative circles. So, while I feel that it is mostly the left that mobs people for now for breathing too loudly through their nose, I should say that the right engages in it as well. I remember some years ago glumly sitting through a presentation where a commentator dissected and destroyed the whole personality of Bill Clinton based on 6 seconds of a video clip played in slow-motion. At least Clinton was the most public figure at the time, and not a 17 year old high school student.

^Patrick Deneen has related that when he taught at Princeton, an important study came out that on the Amish that showed that more than 90% of all those who experience “rumspringa” (when as later teens they leave the community to experience the world) return back to their communities. Deneen was taken aback by how much this bothered his colleagues, who could not conceive of living a life bound by tradition and communal standards. For many of our elite Princteton dons, such a life could only be termed as oppression, and some went so far as to suggest that they should be liberated from this oppression.

This, I’m sure, backs up Bloom’s thesis all the more.

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Sat, 19 Jan 2019 17:45:49 +0000http://astickinthemud.com/?p=5885Today there is much talk surrounding the idea of the lack of communal identification in America. We have red states, and blue states, and we bowl alone. Our kids don’t go outside to play with other neighborhood kids. We have much to lament.

On the other hand, this social/cultural shift (for our purposes here we’ll assume it’s true) has given us some distance from the whole concept of a “nation.” Paul Graham has a marvelous post entitled “The Re-fragmentation” in which he discusses the darker side of everyone huddled together around the center. One could argue that the prime era of nationalism produced an eerie cultural conformity on a scale perhaps not seen since ancient times.

It is this spirit that Benedict Anderson writes Imagined Communities. The book attempts to tackle how it is that communities called “nations” formed. At times I thought he drifted into a bit of esotericism, but I found other insights of his incisive and quite helpful. The first of these insights is in the title itself. Nations require imagination. We can understand that those within an immediate geographic proximity could be a community. We can surmise that those of like-minded belief could find a way to become a community. But how might I be connected with someone in Oregon with whom I may not share either belief, geography, experience, or culture? It requires a certain leap of the imagination.

Anderson cites two texts from the fathers of Filipino nationalism to demonstrate how this idea of a national community could be formed. The first is from Jose Rizal:

Towards the end of October, Don Santiago de los Santos, popularly known as Capitan Tiago, was giving a dinner party. Although, contrary to his usual practice, he announced it only that afternoon, it was already the subject of every conversation in Binondo, in other quarters of the city, and even in the city of Intramuros. In those days Capitan Tiago had the reputation of a lavish host. It was known that his house, like his country, closed his doors to nothing — except to commerce or any new or daring idea.

So the news coursed like an electric shock through the community of parasites, spongers, and gatecrashers, whom God, in His infinite goodness, created, and so tenderly multiplies in Manila. Some hunted polish for their boots, others looked for collar buttons and cravats. But one and all were occupied with the problem of how to greet their host with the familiarity required to create the appearance of long-standing friendship, or if need be, to excuse themselves for not having arrived earlier .The dinner was being given on a house on Anloague Street. Since we cannot recall the street number, we shall describe it such a way that it may be recognized — that is, if earthquakes have not yet destroyed it. We do not believe that its owner will have had it torn down, since such work is usually left to God or Nature, which besides, holds many contracts with our Government.

The second from Marko Kartikromo

It was 7 o’clock Saturday evening; young people in Semarang never at home Saturday night. On this night, however, no one was about. Because the heavy day-long rain had made the roads wet and very slippery, all had stayed at home.

For the workers in shops and offices Saturday morning was a time of anticipation–anticipating their leisure and the fun of walking around the city in the evening, but on this night they were to be disappointed–because of the lethargy created by the bad weather. The main roads usually crammed with all sorts of traffic, the footpaths usually teeming with people, all were deserted. Now and then the crack of horse cab’s whip could be heard spurring a horse on its way.

Samerang was deserted. The light from the gas lamps shone on the shining asphalt road.

A young man was seated on a long rattan lounge reading a newspaper. He was totally engrossed. His occasional anger and smiles showed his deep interest in the stories. He turned the pages of the newspaper, thinking that he might find something to make him feel less miserable. Suddenly he came upon an article entitled:

PROSPERITY

A destitute vagrant became ill on the side of the road and died of exposure

The report moved the young man. He could just conjure up the the suffering of the poor soul as he lay dying on the side of the road. One moment he felt an explosive anger well-up inside. Another moment he felt pity, and yet again he felt anger at the social system which made some men poor and others rich.

If we contrast these texts with two other famous opening passages (The Iliad, and Pride and Prejudice) we may begin to see why the above texts could be described as “nationalistic.”

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Jove and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people, because the son of Atreus had dishonoured Chryses his priest. Now Chryses had come to the ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter, and had brought with him a great ransom: moreover he bore in his hand the sceptre of Apollo wreathed with a suppliant’s wreath and he besought the Achaeans, but most of all the two sons of Atreus, who were their chiefs.

“Sons of Atreus,” he cried, “and all other Achaeans, may the gods who dwell in Olympus grant you to sack the city of Priam, and to reach your homes in safety; but free my daughter, and accept a ransom for her, in reverence to Apollo, son of Jove.”

On this the rest of the Achaeans with one voice were for respecting the priest and taking the ransom that he offered; but not so Agamemnon, who spoke fiercely to him and sent him roughly away. “Old man,” said he, “let me not find you tarrying about our ships, nor yet coming hereafter. Your sceptre of the god and your wreath shall profit you nothing. I will not free her. She shall grow old in my house at Argos far from her own home, busying herself with her loom and visiting my couch; so go, and do not provoke me or it shall be the worse for you.”

The old man feared him and obeyed. Not a word he spoke, but went by the shore of the sounding sea and prayed apart to King Apollo whom lovely Leto had borne. “Hear me,” he cried, “O god of the silver bow, that protects Chryse and holy Cilla and rulest Tenedos with thy might, hear me oh thou of Sminthe. If I have ever decked your temple with garlands, or burned your thigh-bones in fat of bulls or goats, grant my prayer, and let your arrows avenge these my tears upon the Danaans.”

Thus did he pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the rage that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the ships with a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot his arrow in the midst of them. First he smote their mules and their hounds, but presently he aimed his shafts at the people themselves, and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning.

******

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

“Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.

“You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”

This was invitation enough.

“Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.”

If we consider the idea that nations are primarily imagined communities we can examine the texts.

The first two texts . . .

Conjure up a sense of belonging to a particular place. The reader may not know the locations described in experience but can imagine being there.

Establish a connection between the large groups of people in the story, despite the fact that these people do not know each other — note that in the second text the man feels a connection to the vagrant though they had never met.

Presuppose an almost jocular familiarity with the the concept of a “nation.”

But neither The Illiad or Pride and Prejudice do any of these things. The reader gets dropped into a world that is not theirs, and neither author shows much concern to make it so. The reader observes the story, but does not participate in the story. If we consider Austen one of the primary literary voices of her day, we can surmise that the transition to considering “nations” as communities is quite recent. C.S. Lewis commented that the world of Austen and Homer had much more in common with each other, despite their 2500 year separation, than his world and Austen’s, despite the mere 150 year time difference.^

Too many causes exist for this momentous shift to consider them here. Anderson focuses on a couple, however, worth considering.

As mentioned above, one can have a sense of community based on physical proximity. Anderson’s brilliance is to focus on the idea of “imagination” creating this sense of community. We must always realize, then, in the essential unreality of nationhood, a subject to which we will return. But Anderson also shows the concrete foundation for the myth of nationality.

Ideologically the idea of equality had to arise before the idea of nationality had a chance. But the idea of equality needed fertile soil, and Anderson names “print-capitalism” as one primary ingredient. With the Enlightenment came the idea of rational standardization of measurement (of distance, time, weight, etc.) and language.

The printed book, kept a permanent form, capable of infinite reproduction, temporally and spatially. It was no longer subject to the ‘unconsciously modernizing’ habits of monastic scribes. Thus, while 12th century French differed markedly from that written by Villon in the 15th, the rate of change slowed markedly by the in the 16th. ‘By the end of the 17th century languages in Europe had generally assumed their modern forms.’

Capitalism too played its part. “In the Middle Ages,” commented Umberto Eco, “one did not ‘make money.’ You either had money or you didn’t.” Today we hear a great deal about the inequalities of capitalism. But capitalism helped produced a society in which the vast majority of people can share in common experiences though common consumption.* The mass production made possible by political unification helped create mass consumption, and so one hand washes the other. Capitalism and print media together created the newspaper, which formed the ‘daily liturgy’ of the national community.

So to what extent can we say that “nations” have value? One student of mine refused to take the bait and argued bluntly (but effectively) that “they seem to be doing pretty well so far.” Ross Douthat writes,

The nation-state is real, and (thus far) irreplaceable. Yes, the world of nations is full of arbitrary borders, invented traditions, and convenient mythologies layered atop histories of plunder and pillage. And yes, not every government or polity constitutes a nation (see Iraq, or Belgium, or half of Africa). But as guarantors of public order and personal liberty, as sources of meaning and memory and solidarity, as engines of common purpose in the service of the common good, successful nation-states offer something that few of the transnational institutions or organizations bestriding our globalized world have been able to supply. (The arguable exception of Roman Catholicism is, I fear, only arguable these days.) So amid trends that tend to weaken, balkanize or dissolve nation-states, it should not be assumed that a glorious alternative awaits us if we hurry that dissolution to its end.

I agree that the effectiveness of nations vis a vis other forms of organization is at least arguable.** I agree with Douthat that the premature burial of “nations” before their time, with nothing ready to replace it, would be silly at best. But . . . Anderson’s work reminds us that we live in purely imagined communities. They exist not in reality, but for expediency, a product of contingent historical circumstances.

The question remains — will their imaginary existence, like that of the zero, prove so valuable that they will last far into the future? We can see the challenge posed to them already by the internet, globalization, and political polarization. We shall see how strong our imaginations can be in the next generation or two.

Dave

*I do not suggest that defining ourselves through consumption is a good thing in itself, merely that consumerism has had this particular impact.

**In brief, we might say that the birth of nations was bloody (ca. 1800-1871), with the next generation settling into a relative peace. But the first half of the 20th century was catastrophically destructive, with a moderately peaceful era to follow. For whatever it’s worth, the possibly waning age of “nations” — ca. 1970’s – present, has been a period of steadily decreasing world violence.

^M.I. Finley makes an interesting connection between the two eras in his classic, The World of Odysseus. Finley looks at Achilles’ comment in Hades and draws an unexpected conclusion. Achilles seems to state that he would rather be a “thes” on earth than king in Hades. Most translations assume that “thes” means “slave,” but Finley argues that the best translation would mean something like, “unattached free small landholder.” This, and not slavery, was the worst fate Achilles could imagine.

This reminds me of a part in the Gwyenth Paltrow Emma movie where Emma disdains the independent farmer. “He has no society, no information.” We get another confirmation of the role capitalism and the concept of “equality” played in the creation of nations.